Numbers (3 page)

Dupree came out of the back room that he shared with his two younger sisters. He was wearing his favorite light-blue Lee jeans, a striped navy, light blue, and white crewneck shirt, and a pair of navy blue Pro-Keds 69ers on his feet. Although Jenny didn’t have much money, she always made sure her children looked well kept, except for that black Brillo for hair Dupree’s deadbeat dad cursed him with. For that, there was nothing she could do but keep it cut, and most of the time three dollars for the barber was not in the budget.

In the two weeks since the unpleasant incident with his
stepfather, the swelling on Dupree’s caramel-brown face had vanished. Physically, he looked as if it had never happened. Jenny was grateful that her daughters had not been present to see the fight. Fortunately, they had spent that night with Jenny’s girlfriend Sandy and her two daughters, who lived in the Farragut housing projects. When they returned the next day, Jenny made it her business to tell her four-year-old twin daughters that their father would not be living with them any longer. Jenny wasn’t normally the type to mince words, but she spared her daughters the full details. The girls would miss their father, but she knew getting rid of Elroy was best for them all in the long run.

“Did you make up your bed?” Jenny asked Dupree when he walked into the kitchen.

“Yes, Mommy.” Dupree was a momma’s boy.

“That’s my little man.” She smiled. “I need you to go get me a pack of Newports, a pound of salt pork, a quart of milk, and a stick of butter from the store.” She held out four dollar bills. “And don’t be running out in that street without looking both ways!” she cautioned.

“Yes, Mommy,” Dupree replied. “Can I keep the change?”

“Yes, baby, but hurry back. I want to cook breakfast for y’all this morning.”

Dupree stepped off the stoop into a clear Saturday morning. A soft summer breeze brushed his skin as he thought about how much change he’d saved up to this point and how much would be left over after purchasing the groceries for his mother. He was saving up for a Duncan yo-yo and a spinning top; he needed about a dollar more. Knowing there would only be about twenty to forty cents change, he wondered how he was going to get the rest.

“Ms. Jenny’s son!” a voice screamed out. “Yoo-hoo! Ms. Jenny’s son!” Everyone in the neighborhood addressed the other adults with a
Ms.
or
Mr.
tagged to their first name. “Ms. Jenny’s son,” the voice repeated.

Dupree looked up to see who it was that was so desperately trying to get his attention.

“Right here.” The voice belonged to a graying older lady, somewhere in her late forties. She was leaning out her seventh-floor window waving frantically. “Are you going to the store, young man?”

“Yes, Ms. Margaret,” Dupree yelled back up to her. Ms. Margaret was a cafeteria worker at his elementary school, P.S. 67. Given all the kids she served over the twenty-odd years she was employed there, he wasn’t surprised that she didn’t remember his name.

“Okay. Hold on, honey.” She disappeared inside her window and within moments was back with a brown paper bag, which she tossed to Dupree. It contained money and a list of the items that she wanted from the store. “Thank you, sweetie, and take fifty cents for yourself.”

Dupree’s face lit up when he heard he would be making another fifty cents on one trip to the store. “Thank you, Ms. Margaret.” He snatched up the bag and scurried off across Park Avenue to the store.

Dupree’s sister Takeisha, the oldest of the twin girls by three minutes and almost the spitting image of her mother, with her round cheeks and almond eyes, could not care less about her breakfast. Her attention was on a bootleg Barbie doll her daddy had bought for her fourth birthday. The younger, Lakeisha, had the same doll but opted to sit with her eyes affixed to the Saturday-morning cartoons on the small black-and-white TV. It didn’t have an antenna, but the metal coat hanger their mother stuffed in its place worked just fine. Lakeisha resembled her father and Takeisha her mother.

Dupree sat at the dining table with his back to the refrigerator, barely eating, preoccupied with his thoughts. He had gotten
ninety cents just by going to the store for his mother and a neighbor.
What if I went to the store for more people? I could make even more money.

“I don’t know what you daydreaming ’bout, boy, but you better not waste my food,” his mother snapped.

“Yes, Mommy.” Dupree smiled and began eating with gusto. The salt pork and grits with toast and jelly disappeared off his plate. Then he jumped up and darted out the front door, leaving the empty plate on the table before his mother could protest. There were people to see, errands to run, and money to make.

For the rest of the summer Dupree knocked on his neighbors’ doors asking if they needed anything from the store. Eventually he had regular customers he made store runs for, including Ms. Margaret, who never gave him less than fifty cents for his efforts.

Everything was going as smooth as Asian silk until Dupree got robbed by the dirty twins—Bo-Bo and Go-Go—who lived in 56 Monument Walk, the building diagonally across from his. No longer feeling safe going to the store by himself, he got Jarvis to start running errands with him. It cut into his profits, but some money was better than no money.

Dupree and Jarvis were like Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello—an odd couple. Jarvis lived on the fourth floor in a three-bedroom apartment with his mother, two sisters, and two brothers; he was the middle child. Like most families in the projects, their main source of income was welfare. Jarvis was slimmer and taller than Dupree, with a long head. People teased him all the time, calling him names like Jarhead. Because of the constant teasing, Jar, as Dupree called him, would get into fights on the regular. After a while, Dupree came to the conclusion that Jarvis just got a kick out of fighting. The two of them got into a few tussles but never anything serious.

“Jar, you seen the new skateboard they got out? It’s made of
some type of plastic, and when you get on it, it bends, but it won’t break. And it has big, clear wheels, too.” Dupree spoke enthusiastically.

Jarvis, struggling to eat a candy bar and carry a bag of groceries at the same time, spoke with his mouth full. “Yeah, Calvin from building 102 got that skateboard. He said he paid fifteen dollars for it.”

“For real? I got twenty-eight dollars and seventy-two cents saved up. How much you got?” Dupree looked at Jarvis.

“About nine or ten dollars,” he said with a little less enthusiasm than Dupree.

“That’s okay! I’ll chip in the rest and help you get yours.”

Jarvis smiled at his friend. That was one of the things he liked about Dupree. No matter what, Dupree was always willing to share what he had or help him out in some way. Jarvis would do anything for Dupree as well.

After they dropped all the packages off to their respective customers, they headed to Fulton Street, downtown. Of course they were going without the permission of their mothers. Going to the store across Park Avenue and going downtown were different things entirely. If their mothers found out, it would cost them an ass whipping for sure. But it was too nice out to worry about consequences.

Everyone was out enjoying the beautiful midsummer day. Some kids were riding bikes or playing basketball on the court in front of the building, and others were playing skellys. Young girls were jumping rope. The older kids and adults sat on benches. Hip-hop music was on the come up, and the teenagers on the bench were jamming to
Planet Rock
by Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force—pop locking and dancing.

Dupree and Jarvis walked through the projects past the benches in back of building 99, past the nursery up North Portland Avenue, where they stopped at Sarjay’s candy store and
bought some goodies. Then they continued across Myrtle Avenue into Fort Greene Park, walking and talking. They were now approaching the fence that separated the playground from the rest of the park.

“I think I’ma get a red one. How ’bout you, Jar?” Dupree was imagining the skateboard he would be buying shortly. He fingered the change in his shorts pockets.

“I don’t know yet,” Jarvis said. He held out his bag of Cheez Doodles to Dupree. “Want some?”

Dupree reached in and took a handful.

“Yo! Little dudes, where y’all going?” The voice came from directly behind them. Dupree looked back.

It was the dirty twins, sitting on the bench finishing off some pizza. Fear ran up Dupree’s spine. He quickly turned his head and picked up his pace, nudging Jarvis to do the same. He knew the little thugs were nothing but trouble.

Jarvis was unfazed, but he could tell his friend was scared.

The eleven-year-old identical dirtballs were always tore up, and today was no different. Their clothes were soiled and tattered, their hair unkempt, their faces filthy, and they reeked of urine. The twins’ mother was a dope fiend, and their father, when he was around, was a drunk. Other than beating the twins’ asses whenever they felt like it, neither parent paid any attention to them. Well, at least that’s what Dupree heard the grown-ups say. He used to feel sorry for them—until they jumped him and took his change. Now he wasn’t sure what he felt.

“Yo, par … you with the big head,” Go-Go shouted toward the boys, using language he overheard from the teenagers. “Hold up!”

Dupree tried to ignore them by walking even faster, but his friend had a different idea.

Jarvis stopped.

“Come on, Jar!” Dupree exclaimed, but he knew he was wasting
his breath, because Jarvis had no intentions of avoiding a good fight.

“Ya momma,” Jarvis retorted. Although the twins were three years older than they were, Jarvis was almost their height. “That’s right—I said ‘Ya momma’!”

Steaming mad, the twins moved in on Jarvis like he had been the one that started trouble with them. Bo-Bo circled to the left, while Go-Go circled to the right. Bo-Bo reached out first, touching Jarvis’s pocket, making his change jingle. Go-Go smirked before taking a wild swing that grazed Jarvis’s ear.

Dupree wanted no part of the twins. He took off running past the water sprinkler toward one of the park’s exits, but something made him stop. What, he had no idea. Being that his feet were no longer obeying the commands of his brain, he looked back. Jarvis was fighting off both of the boys as hard as he could and losing. Dupree thought about the time when Elroy slapped him and compared it to the punches the twins had landed when they jumped him. What he felt from their young punches was nowhere near the pain he’d felt from his stepfather.

Dupree had made up his mind, and this time his feet were listening. He was going to war alongside his friend: win, lose, or draw.
That’s what friends did for each other.
With those thoughts fresh in his head, he charged back to aid Jarvis, the change in his pocket jingling more vigorously with every step.

When Dupree made it back to the action, he didn’t waste any more time. His first punch connected with Bo-Bo’s eye socket, catching him off guard. Bo-Bo was supposed to be the tougher of the two. He doubled over in pain, clutching his face.

Go-Go was shocked when he heard his brother scream. He looked up to see what had happened, but that proved to be the wrong move. Jarvis caught him with two well-placed punches to the face.

The blows dropped him. Blood gushed from his nose as he lay crumpled next to his brother.

Figuring that he’d had enough, Dupree began pulling Jarvis by the arm, away from the twins. “Come on, Jar!”

“No!” Jarvis pulled away from Dupree and kicked each boy one time hard in the abdomen for good measure. The twins moaned in anguish.

Now it was over.

Dupree and Jarvis took off running, looking back occasionally to see if they were being followed.

They weren’t.

They ran across Willoughby Street, turning left down Ashland Place on the side of Brooklyn Hospital, holding their pockets so the change wouldn’t dance around too crazily. They didn’t stop running until they were halfway up the block. That’s when they looked at each other. Panting and out of breath, they began to laugh uncontrollably.

Jarvis never said anything about his friend running away; Dupree had told him how scared he was of the twins. He was just happy his best friend overcame his fear and decided to come back to his aid—that’s what counted.

Now the dirty twins would think twice before messing with them again.

“Jarvis,” Dupree said, beckoning to his best friend as he skateboarded across the grounds between the project buildings, “watch this trick.” He continued pushing off with his left foot, picking up momentum as he headed straight for the cardboard box in his path. When Dupree was a foot away from the box he applied pressure to the back of his skateboard with his left heel, then he raised his right foot and slid it up the base, causing himself and the board to become airborne, and launched clear over the cardboard box. The landing was perfect; his arms were extended like the wings of a bird as he skidded to a halt.

“Man, that was nice,” Jarvis admitted.

Over the last three summers, Dupree and Jarvis had become
pretty good on their skateboards. Though Jarvis was fearless when it came to fighting, Dupree was the daredevil on the skateboard and the more athletic of the two.